Red Light Town

Red Light Town I lived for a short time in florida. A tiny town with just one traffic light. At one end of the town was a tool and dye where just about everybody worked. At the other other end was a church and behind it a yard with gravestones, all the names worn away by weather. In that part of the country there are wide swaths of unincorporated land and in the summer the thunderheads roll in off the ocean. Often a lightning strike hits some brush and starts a fire that burns hard and wild for a time, until it burns itself out. You can see them from the turnpike at night. Wild fires blazing away nearly out of sight until there's nothing left to burn. The tool and dye started losing business then laid off the people in waves. The graveyard shifts got smaller and the graveyard bigger. And that street ran just one way, from the plant to the churchyard. I knew a young couple there. He made their living with that tool and die kind of life. When they finally shut it down and chained up the doors the factory became empty and the church pews got full. Sometimes it seemed like the graveyard was walking thru the town.Like everything there was buried above the ground. And in most eyes was some kind of burning,the kind that no one pays much attention to.The kind out by the turnpike that flames up from lightning strike, rages quietly for a time then burns itself out. This guy took odd job scrap work. Day labor part time stuff. The kind where the paycheck never goes far enough to get to someplace else. I ran into him one weekend late. He was drunk and hollering about that one stop light and how he was trying to convince his girl to give up everything they ever knew cause whatever was left of dreams had moved elsewhere, far beyond the red light kind of tool and die. And if they stayed they’d get blown away too like so much dead brush from lightning strikes that just happen and burning that no one sees. He said he was trying to convince her to run that light. 'Dreams ain't slow' he told me. 'If you don’t chase 'em, they end up chasing you.' Later I started having a dream where a faceless man in pickup would drive up to that stoplight each dawn, get out with a shotgun and shoot it. Then each night the county would fix it and he’d shoot it again. Most everyone has a red light. Takes courage to run it. To leave everything you ever knew cause you don’t want to end up buried above the ground. They left one dawn. Keys in the mailbox. Address unknown. Goodbye little town …we want more than your tool and die. More than your one way street from the factory to the church yard. I left a month later. And as I drove away one night, from the turnpike in the rear view, all I could see was smoke. WLM